WHERE WE COME FROM...

Where we come from... is what every nation was asking itself. Although in their embellished form they were basically creations of the 19th century, the events and persons which the individual nations dressed up as legends and transfigured to myths, and to which they attributed their origins, were seldom completely fictitious themselves. What was invented, however, was their integration into the constructions of national history. After standpoints and demands had been formulated and presented both at home and abroad, every nation then strove for historical legitimation, as if the right to a fatherland in independence and freedom had already existed in the distant past. Some nations could look further back into their past than others. Greece latched onto the heritage of antiquity, while Italy referred to its revival during the Renaissance. Other nations searched for their origins in pre-Christian times. The Dutch, Germans and French discovered their ancestors among the Batavi, Cherusci and Gauls. Like the Spanish, they imagined that their ancestors’ uprisings against the Roman Empire provided historical proof of the supposedly ancient nation’s traditional desire for freedom and independence. And once again war and faith occupied a position of crucial importance in their reflections on national origins. There are few countries whose myths of origin were not directly or indirectly linked with some wartime event. It was not seldom the war heroes who were singled out as prototypes of the nation. On the other hand, the Frankish chieftain Clovis, the Norwegian king Olav, the Hungarian patron saint Stephen, the Habsburg Rudolf and the Swedish king Gustavus Vasa were rulers who were venerated above all because of their firm belief, and their memory recalled the Christian foundations of the nation.